West Dallas store manager says he shot at armed robbers, called 911, left when officers didn’t arrive within 20 minutes

Update 2 by Scott Goldstein at 7:47 p.m.: Dallas police issued the below statement this evening. It makes no mention of the key issues surrounding the delayed response to this robbery and shooting. Dallas police officials thus far won’t answer any questions.

The Dallas Police Department is currently looking into all the facts and circumstances surrounding the robbery offense that occurred at Pepe’s Grocery, 4819 Bernal Drive. One suspect is in custody however detectives are pursuing additional leads to determine if other individuals are involved.

Update by Scott Goldstein at 4:39 p.m.: In an interview inside the store this afternoon, manager Joe Cho said when he spotted the armed robbers from inside his office, he emerged with a handgun and shot at them.

They fired back before fleeing, he said, and he immediately called 911 to report the attempted robbery and shooting.

Cho waited 20 minutes for police officers to get to the store where he’s worked for 17 years, he said. When they didn’t show up, he locked up and went home for the night.

Asked if he was surprised or upset by the Dallas police response to his call for help, he said, “upset, definitely.”

“Twenty minutes. What the hell,” said Cho, a native of Korea who moved to the area 30 years ago.

According to public records, it was nearly another hour before officers arrived at the scene at 12:15 a.m. Cho said officers called him at home after 1 a.m. and asked him to come back to his store, which he did, despite the fact that he was not at all happy about it.

“I’m at home safe, everything, I relax right now,” Cho said. “Then you call me about an hour something later, you want me to come back over here.”

Original post at 9:41 a.m.: Sunday night the owner of a West Dallas grocery-deli used his .38 caliber revolver to take out a would-be robber carrying an assault rifle, according to a police report.

Police are trying to untangle the time line of events, but one thing’s clear: The shooting took place at Pepe’s Grocery at 4819 Bernal Drive, between the west levee of the Trinity River and Singleton Boulevard. That much was evident when officers arrived at the store shortly after midnight this morning on a robbery call and discovered a trail of blood leading from the store into the street and into a nearby field.

But there was a problem: The store was closed. Officers placed a call to the owner and told him to get back to Pepe’s to explain what had happened.

The owner told officers four armed men “ran” into his store; at least one of the would-be stick-up men, he said, was carrying what looked like an assault rifle. The owner told officers he grabbed his .38 out of the office, then came out front to confront the gunmen, one of whom was instructing Pepe’s employees to “give me the money.” The store manager said he fired two shots at the man with the assault rifle, after which all four men ran out of the store.

The store’s owner said he called police, but they never arrived. 911 records show an employee of the store called police at 11 p.m. So he sent his employees home and locked up for the night — but not before finding two shell casings in one of the aisles. The owner told police they must have been fired by one of the suspects.

Turns out, officers had actually been working a related call just down the street, in the 5800 block of Bernal, where, at 11:07 p.m. Sunday, police had been dispatched on a shooting call. There, police say, they found a man with gunshot wounds to the left side of his body. But there was no blood at the scene. Police quickly deduced the man had been “transported to the location and then dumped out of a vehicle.” Officers became decidedly suspicious when he refused to tell police where he’d been shot or by whom, and when they could tell he was trying to hide some clothes — a black sweatshirt, for instance, and a black “beanie” — under a car.

While they were questioning that man, officers got another call about two black males seen trying to dispose of “some bloody clothes” at a nearby house. Police would eventually discover a black sweater, a black-and-green bandana and a backpack. But the men were gone.

Meanwhile, back at Pepe’s officers, screened the surveillance-cam footage of the attempted robbery. And, sure enough, says the report, the man with the gunshot wounds “was the first person in the store and was the person with the assault rifle.” And one of the other men in the video was seen wearing the clothes that had been ditched at the house up Bernal.

The suspect who’d been shot was eventually taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, but police have yet to recover the assault rifle. Police are “actively” looking for the other three suspects.

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